#26 - Founders of Science Exchange, Goldbely, and The Flex Company Discuss Fundraising

**Craig Cannon** (0:00)
Hey, this is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinator's podcast. Today's episode is about fundraising, and it was recorded during our female founders conference.
So this conversation is moderated by Kat Manalac, who's a partner of YC, and she invited three YC founders on stage to talk about their experiences of fundraising. So those founders are Elizabeth Iorns of Science Exchange, Vanessa Torrivilla of Goldbely, and Erica Jensen of The Flex Company. And as always, if you want to read the transcript or watch the YouTube video, you can check out blog.ycombinator.com. All right, here we go.

**Kat Manalac** (0:32)
Hi, I'm Kat, and I'm really excited to introduce you to three YC alumni founders.
And this is actually gonna dovetail really nicely with what Kirstie and Aileen were just talking about, because we're gonna be talking a little bit about fundraising, because we all know that that's a big challenge. And then hopefully we can get to a couple questions beyond that. But these three women are running companies that cover a wide range of categories. We have something from the sciences, marketplace, feminine hygiene. We also have companies here at different stages. So Erica from Flex just went through YC in the summer, last summer, and raised a seed. Elizabeth went through in, what was it?
Summer 2011, and she just announced her series C raise today. So congratulations, that's huge news.
And Vanessa with Goldbely went through YC in winter 2013 and raised a series A last year. So we have a wide range of categories. We have a wide range of stages. So I'm really excited for you all to kind of tell your story. So can you each introduce yourselves, talk a little bit about what your company does and where you're at today?

**Elizabeth Iorns** (1:56)
Great, so I'm Elizabeth Iorns. I'm the founder and CEO of Science Exchange. Science Exchange is a marketplace for outsourced research and development. We work with some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, as well as agro-science, cosmetics, aerospace, and food science companies to help them manage their outsourced research and development.
We have just raised our Series C. We have been in operation for six years, and through that process, have built the company now to a global stage. So it's very exciting.

**Kat Manalac** (2:27)
That's awesome.
All right, Vanessa. Yeah.

**Vanessa Torrivilla** (2:33)
My name is Vanessa Torrivilla, and I am the co-founder and chief creative officer of Goldbely.
As Kat said, we did winter 2013 We are a marketplace where you can discover the greatest, most iconic regional foods from everywhere in the country, shipped to your door. Through us, you can experience places like Momofuku Milk Bar and Magnolia Bakery in New York, Salt Lake Barbecue in Texas, and we ship it to you, no matter where you're located. We recently raised $10 million Series A, and yeah, we're doing pretty well right now.

**Erica Jensen** (3:21)
I'm Erica. I'm the co-founder of The Flex Company. Like Kat said, we went through YC, actually twice last year, and we closed a $4 million seed round in September.
Our product is called Flex. It's a new menstrual product that replaces tampons, pads and menstrual cups. You can wear it for 12 hours. It's disposable. You can have mess free period sex while wearing it.
And we started shipping to customers in October, and we're currently on a multi-million dollar run rate.

**Kat Manalac** (3:55)
So I wanted to do one really quick survey in the audience. How many of you have raised money? Okay, okay. How many of you raised a seed?
Okay. Series B?
So now we know where we're at. Okay. So on a scale from one to 10, where one is easy peasy, and 10 is the hardest thing you've ever had to do as founders, how hard do you think, say, raising your seed was on that scale?

**Elizabeth Iorns** (4:26)
For us, it was probably a four.

**Erica Jensen** (4:29)
Okay.

**Kat Manalac** (4:30)
So not the hardest.

**Elizabeth Iorns** (4:31)
Definitely not the hardest.

**Vanessa Torrivilla** (4:34)
I feel like it was more like a nine, raising a seed, because fundraising, it's not something that you want to do. You didn't start a company to fundraise, so I would give it like a nine.

**Erica Jensen** (4:47)
I think the first check is the hardest check you're ever gonna close, and that was for sure a really solid nine. And everything beyond that was kind of a four.

**Kat Manalac** (4:57)
So how far along were your products when you first raised money?

**Erica Jensen** (5:03)
Well, so we manufacture a type two medical device that's regulated by the FDA, so we weren't very far at all, because as you can imagine, that costs a lot of money. So we were really an idea and a design and an early prototype and a founding team.